Sacred Ecology Speech

Sacred Ecology Speech

I attended the speech at Sonoma State last Wednesday night on Sacred Ecology. Overall, it was alright. The main question that the speaker posed was ‘have we lost our connection to nature?’. He opened the speech with what he called “new age” people crying in the woods about the loss of the trees and they were expressing their sadness and anger and what was happening to nature around them. Although the clip was absurd it was weirdly nice to see people caring so much for something, even if it just was trees. (just on a side note, its rare to see anyone get that worked up over anything anymore just because society seems to be so busy and individualistic that the better question to be asked instead of if we have lost connection to nature, but rather have we lost our ability to connect emotionally with anything anymore? But that is just me). He went through world religions and how they view nature in a quick half hour. The most interesting was the animal kinship that Native Americans have with animals. He said there is an “endless recipriocity between humans and animals” which I can agree with. He also posed the perspective that “nature” is a man made category and before it was defined it was just the space people lived in, where ever it may be, and the relationship one had with that space.
He also showed a short biography film of Ansel Adams, a nature photographer who people claimed could see life in a still moment in time in nature. Perhaps.
The question and answer part of the speech was rather uninformative except one lady stated something that I had yet to consider. She said that this generation (my generation) is forced to feel guilty about the state of the environment and are also being held responsible for somehow picking the pieces up and putting it back together, but in fact my generation has inherited a wounded environment that has been abused throughout the many generations before mine. That was the best point of the whole night.
Overall, the speaker seemed well informed and passionate about his perspective on Sacred Ecology, but I have to argue and wonder how realistic he really is. His best quote was this “ if your too romantic about it and don’t look at the dark side, that is not the approach, see the dark with the light”. This is true about everything, not just ecology.